A: A Symphonic Play™ is a unique collaborative art form, a new genre created by playwright and stage director Didi Balle, who since 2008, has premiered nine symphonic plays commissioned and performed by major American orchestras. A Symphonic Play™ is a powerful synthesis of two timeless arts: classical music and live theater woven into a seamless and dynamic fusion marrying orchestral music and high drama. Imagine a Broadway play sharing the stage with a conductor and a symphony orchestra playing together to enact the emotional, musical and psychological drama catalyzing the creations of the great composers.

At the heart of each scripted drama is a compelling musical story whose protagonist is a famous composer: Beethoven. Mozart. Mahler and Freud. Wagner. Shostakovich. Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff …. The cast includes professional actors playing an array of characters -- spouses, rivals, lovers, therapists, publishers, siblings, royal patrons etc. -- whose lives are entwined with the composer's life and work. Each highly-crafted play artfully weaves musical excerpts into the dramatic storyline in myriad forms. The music and drama work in tandem, dovetailing in and out, propelling the story's momentum culminating in its creative/musical epiphany/denouement. Some symphonic plays, such as "The Rachmaninoff Trilogy," are structured to reflect a musical form (e.g., a piano concerto with three movements/three plays with recurring themes/stories. Note: "The Rachmaninoff Trilogy" is unique: Three separate musical plays written for and performed by five actors, a player piano using digitized Rachmaninoff recordings, and an audio component of recorded orchestral excerpts; it may also be performed with a chamber orchestra.

A Symphonic Play is a musical play. The actors memorize and embody the roles, bringing the characters to life. Playwright-Director Didi Balle stages/blocks the musical play, creating a Broadway level of performance enhanced by historic costumes, theatrical lighting, minimal but elegant sets, props, and in certain plays, a large media screen with dynamic imagery amplifies the experience. The theatrical/musical experience bringing the composer's world to life piques the interest of the newly initiated, and deepens the passion of the devotee.

A Symphonic Play is entertaining, enlightening and educative. Allows audiences to hear/understand a composer's music in a new and very personal way. Symphonic Plays have thrilled and engaged classical music audiences of all ages and demographics since their inception in 2008 with CSI: BEETHOVEN. Maestra Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony were key to the emergence and development of Symphonic Plays.

In a larger sense, a Symphonic Play™ dramatically queries the nature and expression of the creative force/spirit that lives within the great composers, and resides, to varying degrees, in all of us. A Symphonic Play™ has at its root a theatrical investigation into the personal and universal nature of the creative process: the struggles, challenges, furies and epiphanies at the heart of creative expression. Each Symphonic Play reveals the unique internal-external conflicts faced and ultimately, overcome, by the great composers: Beethoven (“CSI: Beethoven”) Mahler (“Analyze This: Mahler and Freud”), Shostakovich ("Shostakovich: Notes For Stalin"); Wagner ("A Composer Fit for a King: Wagner & King Ludwig II"), Mozart ("CSI: MOZART"); Shostakovitch ("Shostakovitch: Notes For Stalin"); Tchaikovsky ("Mad But For Music"); Rachmaninoff ("The Rachmaninoff Trilogy"). Variations on a Theme include Sir Isaac Newton ("The Secret Life of Isaac Newton") and "Radio Rhapsody" (Paul Whiteman and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue).